Perhaps she did not intend to reveal so much, but her story came spilling out like so many seeds waiting to take root. The room went silent, though the sky, so dreary and overcast when I arrived in the early afternoon, came alive with the sudden appearance of the sun. A sudden splash of several golden rays found their way into the interior of the apartment facing the Hollywood freeway, so close you could hear the traffic, a continual hiss and underlying roar that made it nearly impossible to think. She opened the door wearing a skullcap and looked up at me. On a small coffee table sat several cups of tea. I took a seat opposite her in the living room on a threadbare chair. The apartment was completely barren, a floor rug worn to threads, everything dead green, the walls, the coloring, the air.

A small, shy, elderly woman, at times sanguine, at other times bitter, she was eager to talk about herself, like a tableaux calling for a final reckoning. I detected some hesitancy on her part, assuring her I was harmless, interested only in seeing her collection of paintings by a painter completely unknown to me. A chance telephone call to the gallery where I worked led to conversation and permission to visit and see for myself the paintings of Ashkenazy who had no provenance either past, present or future. She was searching for more information on him, some catalog of his work that would give some idea of their value at auction, but I could find nothing.

“I’m trying to find one of his paintings now,” she said, “a very special painting of me I thought no one would ever see. A woman says she owns it, but cannot find it. I'm afraid she just doesn't want to part with it. The work is beyond description.”

I was certain Ashkenazy was a myth, found no mention of a Russian artist by that name in any book, past or present, which made me think he was pure invention. That this little wizened woman before me was living some kind of delusional fantasy I found not uncommon for those stranded for years on the west coast. I met many of them hanging on to some tattered shred of life. There was Lenore, once an assistant director at Columbia studios with dreams of making it as a scriptwriter. She wound up with stomach cancer and a heart pacer, living a hand-to-mouth existence after losing her membership to the screenwriters’ guild, hoping for calls that never came from old writing pals. Then there was fat David who won an Obie for one golden performance on the New York stage sometime in the 1950’s, thereafter, straight downhill, ending up the road manager for some third-rate Hollywood lounge singer. He stayed all day in his two-room apartment surrounded by everything Snoopy, stuffed dolls, ashtrays, until losing both his legs to diabetes. What made this old woman’s story any different?

“I could tell by your voice over the telephone you were very young,” she said looking at me from the opposite side of the coffee table. “I knew you’d be disappointed when you saw me. I’m not the beauty I once was.”

She was mistaken to think the ravages of old age carved into her face were offensive to my aesthetic sensibilities, but my curiosity was piqued at the idea of seeing her collection of paintings by an artist who left little or no trace of his existence, except for his works supposedly languishing in the recesses of her rundown Hollywood apartment.

“I’ve never seen your kind of expression before,” she said looking at me intently. “I want to say something, but it wouldn’t be right.”

“But where are your paintings by Ashkenazy?” I asked.

She pointed to her bedroom.

“Every day I sit and look at them. They’re in that room, but I don’t sleep there. I sleep here onthe sofa.”

She paused long enough for me to ponder that fact, but before I could ask why, she confessedshe modeled for him many times for many of his paintings.

"It was after one of my symbolical dances," she said. "I was very interested in dance and did so only for Russians. They're funny people. They come to America and think they’re aristocrats. I was a star among them. I had agents who wanted to make me a miracle of the world because I combined dance with words. One of my best agents wanted me trained right away.

“‘You cannot be more ready than you are,’ he said.

“‘No, no, I'm not ready,’ I said.

“I did three different versions of Salome. One was pantomime, one without, and another only dance. My teacher came to me one day and said, 'My God! You're such a breathtaking beauty, your body, the way you move!'

“'Everything for art,’ I said.

“I started writing poetry and fairy tales for the movies. A Hollywood director saw me on stage one night and was very interested in a fairy tale I wrote. He wanted me to play the role on screen. “‘No, I cannot do anything but dance,’ I said. When he came backstage, he introduced me to a Russian friend. ‘This is the artist Ashkenazy," he said. ‘He would like you to model for him.’

“I had no idea who he was or why he was even interested in me, but his eyes were so sad and he hardly said a word, but for some reason I did not refuse his request. It was all done very quietly, very formally, as if we were meant to fall in love.

“At the beginning there was nothing between us. I was older than him, but it made no difference. There was something about his expression, the way he handled himself, very self-effacing, intense, full of self-control, relaxed but underneath aware of everything. He looked at me with curiosity, as though trying to understand me with his eyes. Everything I was emotionally and physically was his, as if he saw more of me than I saw in myself. I was beautiful, but did not know how beautiful until he began painting me. No man ever worshipped me the way he did.

I never thought a man could love a woman in such a way. His friends said he studied the stars. I just knew I wanted to be with him.

“'You are one of the rarest women I've ever met,' he said. ‘You have two natures. Luck will fall into your hands, but you'll end your stage life only when you fall in love.'

“I didn't know what he meant, but little by little I turned away from my symbolical dance and found his worship enough to gratify my yearning for artistic expression. He called me ‘angel’ and wanted to change my hair red for a painting. I said no, but did it anyway because I loved him. He gave me the painting and another of me sitting with my back turned, dressed in an elaborate white, silk Chinese gown.

“At first his paintings were modest, but one day he asked if he could paint me nude. He said he would die if he couldn't. I wasn't afraid at first when he started painting, but then I ran away and said I would never come back. Talent, you see, is like a chain. One links to another, until you are so entangled there is no escape. I was never so vulnerable and weak as I was with him. I couldn’t refuse him anything, even my body.

“When I came back, I asked him, ‘what do you want me to do?’

“He gave me a pair of white gloves and asked me to sit in a chair with only a coverlet draped over my hips and legs. The next painting, he asked me to sit nude next to a white, floral bouquet, in another next to a white cockatoo on a perch, and in another simply with arms folded. But each painting seemed to make me more and more vulnerable. He asked me to pose in unspeakable positions and I was afraid and ran away again, saying I would never come back, but I did. Still he was never satisfied because he said there was something missing, something about me he couldn't express.

One afternoon, he asked me to pose in a particularly obscene position. Even after all his other requests to pose in the nude, I could not refuse. When it was over, he looked gratified in a way that went beyond anything artistic. What did my beauty matter then? The next day his mother called and told me his son was seriously ill.”

“‘His son?’ I said. “‘Didn't he tell you he was married?’ “I was shocked. “ Didn’t he tell you about his heart problems as well?”

“I was stunned. The man I loved was unattainable from the very beginning and I gave him everything.”

She paused and looked out the window. "I talk too much, take too much of your time," she suddenly said in a voice tinged with embarrassment.

I glanced toward the bedroom. "May I see Ashkenazy's work?"

She looked into my face measuring my sincerity. Did she fear I would take away something from Ashkenazy that she herself secreted all those years gazing at herself the way he saw her? Was it all idealism and nothing more on Ashkenazy's part, or did he really believe there was something eternal to beauty? After decades of devotion by the one object of his obsession, this wizened little woman who could barely walk, who poured out her story to me in vindication for a life of trials and unhappiness, even with my hand on the door knob ready to enter the bedroom, I felt some profound understanding of beauty that had eluded me up to then, a novice and innocent who, like Ashkenazy, revered the enigmatic, but compelling beauty of women.

For several seconds longer I stood before the door without making a move to enter the room.

"What's the matter?" she said.

​I feared there was nothing there, or something too profound to see, as much an illusion for me as perhaps for her. It was impossible to say. I felt the sky's softness and realized, leaving the old woman standing at the door of her apartment, wondering why I never entered the room that I probably would never see her again, but promised I would and found out by chance she died six months after my visit. I set off instantly for her apartment, hoping to salvage something of the old woman's letters, photographs, newspaper clippings, anything to validate the truth of her story, but when I arrived, no one had saved a thing, or even knew if she had a family, the management having disposed of all her possessions, including the paintings of Ashkenazy.

Thomas Sanfilip is a poet and writer whose work has appeared in the Shore Poetry Anthology, Thalassa, Ivory Tower, Nit & Wit, Tomorrow, Ginosko Literary Journal, Maudlin House, Feile-Festa, Per Contra, and Brilliant Flash Fiction. Five collections of poetry have been published, in addition to a collection of short fiction, The Killing Sun (2006).